There is no basis for vaccinating children from Covid-19 as indicated by Dr. Anthony Fauci, none (6 months to 11 years old). The children are at very low risk of illness, especially severe illness from Covid, and children do not spread the illness. The most updated data by the American Academy of Pediatrics showed that “Children were 0.00%-0.19% of all COVID-19 deaths, and 10 [US] states reported zero child deaths. In states reporting, 0.00%-0.03% of all child Covid-19 cases resulted in death.”
A high-quality robust study in the French Alps examined the spread of Covid-19 virus via a cluster of Covid-19. They followed one infected child who visited three different schools and interacted with other children, teachers, and various adults. They reported no instance of secondary transmission despite close interactions. These data have been available to the CDC and other health experts for over a year. Ludvigsson published a seminal paper in the New England Journal of Medicine on Covid-19 among children 1 to 16 years of age and their teachers in Sweden.
From the nearly 2 million children that were followed in school in Sweden, it was reported that with no mask mandates, there were zero deaths from Covid and a few instances of transmission and minimal hospitalization. A study published in Nature found no instances of asymptomatic spread from positive asymptomatic cases among all 1,174 close contacts of the cases, based on a base sample of 10 million persons. The World Health Organization (WHO) also made this claim that asymptomatic spread/transmission is rare. This issue of asymptomatic spread is the key issue being used to force vaccination in children. The science, however, remains contrary to this proposed policy mandate.
The recent push by the CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and other television medical experts who suggest that we can only get to herd immunity by vaccinating our children is absurd and patently false. They are denying scientific reality. They are spreading false information to the nation. The current data suggest that we are much nearer to herd immunity than they wish it to be. They continue to inaccurately discount cross protection immunity from prior coronaviruses and common colds. They have disregarded the fact that a large swath of the population was not captured in the case load, via laboratory confirmed cases.
The estimates range that for every ONE confirmed case, there might be 6 or even 8 unidentified individuals who have had Covid. Many people have recovered from Covid and they are being disregarded in Dr. Fauci’s inaccurate statements on herd immunity e.g. his absurd statement that 90% must be vaccinated. Children can become infected as they do for usual pathogens they encounter in their daily lives, ‘naturally.’ Like the common cold or influenza, and alike for other infections. We already know that there is no emergency in children regarding Covid-19. And so why would Moderna Inc. seek to trial this vaccine on children with a death rate in this group of 0.003% (IFR 0.00003)? Moderna must show us why it is not dangerous to put this vaccine in children, and they have not.
We argue vehemently that if children are needed from a ‘numbers’ point of view for driving population level ‘herd’ immunity, then they must be allowed to get infected naturally and harmlessly as part of day-to-day living and we do it by opening schools and allowing them to live reasonably normal lives with sensible precautions e.g. enhanced sanitation, hygiene, and disinfectant. Children can and do get infected as they do for usual pathogens they encounter in their daily lives, ‘naturally.’ These pathogens include the common influenza virus and other influenza-like illnesses.
Allow child-to-child daily interaction. Not only will that drive the adaptive immunity but it will give the children a more robust defense against any mutant variants of the virus itself. This will also allow our children’s immune systems to be taxed and tuned up daily, as opposed to the weakening we are subjecting it to with the year-long lockdowns and school closures. We do it while at the same time strongly protecting the elderly who are frail, the elderly in general, and those with comorbid conditions and obese individuals. We must use stringent protections of our nursing homes and other similar congregated settings (including the staff, who remain often the source of the infection). It is better science to use a more ‘focused‘ protection and targeting that is based on age and known risk factors especially, regarding the children.
History teaches us to pause and reflect upon our previous miscues and unforced blunders that had significant consequences. It behooves us to remember the increased incidence of narcolepsy in children in Scandinavian countries following the H1N1 influenza ASO3-adjuvanted vaccine used for the 2009 pandemic (Pandemrix influenza vaccination program). Additionally, the harms caused by the dengue vaccine in children in the Philippines also come to mind that bore a burden on our society of humans. Sanofi Pasteur halted the vaccines in 2017 due to the very dangerous risk of plasma leakage akin to ebola. “It’s a complication called plasma leakage syndrome…he [Halstead] was so worried, he started writing editorials to scientific journals, even warned the Filipino government about the problem…I just say, no, you can’t give a vaccine to somebody – some perfectly normal, healthy person – and now put them at risk for the rest of their lives for plasma leakage syndrome. You can’t do that.” The tainted polio vaccine that sickened and fatally paralyzed children in 1955 in the United States is also worthy of review in this context. The harm that can accrue from a rapid deployment of mass vaccination to the children has not proven to be safe in all the cases. Perhaps this comment is worth noting: “In 1977, for example, a triple vaccination (against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus) from a defective batch left several children blind, deaf and disabled forever.”
There are potentially real harms to these Covid vaccines and as an example, Canada has now suspended the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine for those under 55 based on risk. “Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) is recommending provinces pause the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine on those under the age of 55 because of safety concerns” (blood clotting and thrombocytopenia). There is the real concern of “disease enhancement” whereby “in the past for a few viral vaccines where those immunized suffered increased severity or death when they later encountered the virus [in the wild] or were found to have an increased frequency of infection.” This is a concern for the Covid vaccines, in adults and certainly children given the past catastrophic experience with the dengue vaccine. Harms and adverse events (e.g. blood clots) are being reported in the CDC’s VAERS system as well as globally and we need urgent study of the temporal relationship of reported adverse events to administration of the vaccines. Currently, there have been approximately 1,900 vaccine-related deaths reported to VAERS as of March 15th 2021. It is still too early to tell how this will play out with these vaccines and reported harms and we remain cautiously optimistic yet cognizant that the trials have not run for the optimal duration of time to assess safety. Thus, our grave concern for our children being administered these yet proven safe vaccines.
Moreover, one has to understand that all medications and drugs including vaccines may have some adverse effects on the human body. All drugs, including all interventions carry risk. It is therefore imperative that parents of children be informed about the potential risks of any such intervention employed on a child. “But,” says the CDC representative, “Individuals react differently to vaccines, and there is no way to absolutely predict the reaction of a specific individual to a particular vaccine. Anyone who takes a vaccine should be fully informed about both the benefits and the risks of vaccination.” The key is to have total transparency of benefits and risks of using the vaccine in children. We agree wholeheartedly that vaccines are important and potent weapons we have in reducing disease in the population as a whole.
In comparison, we point out that with the Polio vaccine, from inception of the vaccine concept in 1931 (10 years after FDR was stricken with Polio), indications are that it took roughly 20 years before Jonas Salk used the vaccine to vaccinate his family and then the world. Over the years, vaccines have saved countless lives and will continue to do so. We believe that vaccines have a large and critically important role in protecting human lives, but these protections have been the result of a thorough and sometimes tedious ritual of testing along with long-term safety assessment over a period of years in order to be confident that any one new vaccine is both safe and effective. Unfortunately, we cannot apply these time-tested requisites to the current crop of new vaccines for Covid-19. But again, we reiterate that it’s one thing to let adults decide, after informed consent, to be vaccinated but it is another thing entirely to go about vaccinating our children without evidence for long-term safety, especially when their risks of either becoming ill, or suffering severe illness from SARS-CoV-2 are infinitesimally small.
The argument for a well-tested and safe vaccine requires time under study, and this prevents unnecessary harm to the children that we aim to protect. Ensuring their safety requires a thorough review of well-established data of use of such vaccines in children. Otherwise, we as their caretakers are subjecting them to potentially real harm under the banner of doing good!
What is needed is to allow children to mingle and to acquire infection naturally and harmlessly, in their schools, home, and their everyday environments. We remain skeptical about the safety of the currently administered vaccines, since the FDA issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) and did not apply the needed full regulatory BLA approval. This continues to concern us greatly, since the safety component has not been fully assessed and essentially means that all persons taking Covid vaccines at present are in a large Phase III trial. The efficacy and safety results will be known in 2-3 years and perhaps longer for the longer-term adverse effects that become known at a later date. Exposing children to an untested Emergency Use medication implies that there is a dire risk to the children without it. There are no data to support such a potential risk. No such data, no evidence whatsoever of this exists, and for the CDC or Dr. Fauci or any medical expert to imply otherwise is duplicitous. We know the new CDC Director is working in a highly politically charged environment with many moving parts, and we urge her to ensure that the American population, and particularly parents, are not misled by public health experts on vaccinating children. We trust that she will ensure this.
This really is a question of risk management for parents and parents must seriously consider that Covid-19 is a far less dangerous illness for children than influenza. This is known by the medical community and parents are being deceived as to greater risk. Parents must be brave and be willing to assess this purely from a benefit versus risk position and ask themselves: ‘If my child has little if any risk, near zero risk of severe sequelae or death, and thus no benefit from the vaccine, yet there could be potential harms and as yet unknown harms from the vaccine (as already reported in adults who have received the vaccines), then why would I subject my child to such a vaccine?’ And in the presence of the potential risks, as well as the fact that a vaccine for Covid-19 is simply not indicated in children, why would a loving parent allow their child to be vaccinated with still-experimental vaccines? Why put a foreign substance into the body of your child when they have vanishingly low risk of spreading it or getting seriously ill if infected? Why? You must take a step back, we plead, and think this through carefully.
Furthermore, it is nonsensical to suggest that the Covid ‘variants’ may drive infection in children and harm them and there is no basis for such a statement. For those who are trying to frighten parents by the illogical and absurd statements that a lethal strain may emerge among the variants, then we argue that you are using terms like ‘may’ and ‘could’ and ‘might.’ We can find no evidence to support such claims. It is simply rampant speculation! Making such claims is not science, and decisions based on such claims are not evidence-based. We need to see the actual science and not just rampant speculation by often nonsensical media medical experts. We have heard Dr. Fauci make statements with no science or data to back his statements up. Remember the retraction of the double-mask idiocy? Remember when he said Covid is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu? Now they are talking about a third vaccine booster shot and it suggests that those in charge are flying by the seat of their pants and do not know what they are doing. A very prominent Professor out of Johns Hopkins, Dr. Marty Makary, gets it right now when he calls out these experts and agencies for their foolishness and fear mongering that is often inaccurate. He recently eviscerated CDC’s guidelines and called out Dr. Fauci for his inaccurate claims on herd immunity.
Focusing a bit more on the variants or mutations, of concern is the emerging indication (at this time we are prognosticating and conjecturing but we are indeed concerned) that the very narrowly focused ‘spike-specific’ antibody immunity provoked by the existing Covid vaccines is not broad enough, or comprehensive, durable, robust, and complete as ‘natural exposure immunity.’ There is debate that these vaccines are not as effective as they were reported to be and are not conferring the sterilizing type immunity with strong neutralizing antibodies, rendering the emerging variants as potentially noxious, capable of blowing past the vaccine-induced immunity.
Vaccine developers may be faced with having to fix the spike protein (epitopes) immunity by swapping them out for the new variants as they emerge (else they will be ineffective), or, providing the host immune response with a much broader vaccine with multiple protein targets on the virus and not only the spike protein. Thus, we ask, is Dr. Fauci and the CDC etc. advising parents to take a vaccine that does not and will not provide the long-term safety assessment, and will be under ‘experimental’ emergency use by the FDA, and that will require multiple shots given the issue we just raised about the variants and the inability for the narrow immunity to confer protection? How many shots? How regular? Why not one ‘universal’ vaccine administered once, and only after the long-term safety data is available and assessed? Why not allow several years of adults having the current vaccine to assess the harms before we interfere with our low-risk children? Do you understand the issues involved and how unsettling all of this is and the lack of clarity by the public health experts and decision-makers, leaving parents in the dark as to what’s next? This makes no sense and is very frightening.
Our purpose is to shed light on the risky nature of the proposed vaccine policy for children. Such a policy merits detailed investigation prior to implementation. Experts have proven to be less of experts and more of the fear mongering crowd. For fear of being exposed, these experts tend to blame others, especially those that offer valid critique of their failed methodologies and enacted policies. We therefore continue to urge that parents be fully informed in the decision-making process with their physician, prior to their children receiving the vaccine. Children, especially those who have not acquired the critical thought process, must not be used to experiment upon unless there is a valid consent form bearing the parent’s signature. We also reiterate that vaccines that have been tested thoroughly, such as the Mumps, Measles and Rubella vaccine, the Polio vaccine and others (to prevent vaccine preventable illnesses), are a must to avoid large-scale harm to children. But these vaccines have undergone the rigors of research and have a determinant safety record. The current Covid vaccines do not have such a detailed record of either safety or efficacy to warrant a large-scale vaccination of the children. The planned research suggests similar.
We are in a dangerous situation here by advocating vaccination of our low-risk children and we must ask these experts for the evidence to support their often ridiculous specious statements. Look at how wrong they were on lockdowns. They have failed and continue to fail in protecting the elderly while destroying families and sacrificing our kids, especially low-income families. Incredibly, they now try to blame those who criticized and questioned the lockdowns for the failure of the very lockdowns they advocated and that were implemented. It makes no sense and the hubris of these experts defies logic. So you want to trust these same people when they just tell you nonchalantly that your child is to be vaccinated? And they do it with hollowness and no scientific basis whatsoever and we are to accept that speciousness? I say no!
Our children are not for you to ‘experiment’ on. There is absolutely no data, no evidence, none, to support the vaccination of our children in this matter. We are against it and find this unacceptable a proposition. Our children are far too precious to experiment with. And we make this clarion call to minority and African-American parents, to be careful and safeguard your children.
Faust stated para that “the FDA will assess the vaccines for children and consider them safe.” This is a forgone conclusion by Faust and we consider it absurd and reckless. It raises many questions for he does not know what the FDA will be assessing and what the trials will show. We urge the mothers and fathers to demand the science, demand the evidence before embarking on this journey.
We especially urge the minority parents and their children to seek as much information as possible and always make decisions with their physicians, regarding the risks and benefits of such a vaccine.
Think carefully you mothers and fathers out there, you are well capable of informed decision-making. Demand the science, demand the evidence from these talking heads, often unscientific and unsound experts who till now have devastated societies with their nonsensical, baseless, damaging, destructive lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, and other restrictions. Minority children (and minority women often with least bargaining power) have fared the worst in all of this pandemic lockdown insanity and may well fear the worst with these experimental unnecessary vaccines. To date, no argument, no information, no statements by Dr. Fauci, the CDC, or any of the television medical experts have made any sense on why children must be vaccinated. None. If there is a credible basis, if there is evidence, then bring the evidence and let us have a look at it, but until then, please leave our children alone! If we see evidence of the necessity, we will agree, but we have seen none and all we are hearing in this is fear mongering and falsehoods and the nation’s parents must not be lied to anymore! They want honesty, clarity, balanced information that could help them make informed decisions. We must not expose our children to ‘unnecessary’ harm. We must not expose them to a substance that has not been tested on children (or plan to be) in the way it should be and for as long as necessary. We must not expose children to a vaccine that based on their risk, is absolutely not needed. Moreover, they can become infected naturally, if their immunity is needed.
To close, we make this plea and urge those in the medical field to reiterate the need for a thorough examination of the science of efficacy, the potential risks to the children and the evidence that supports the need for such a medical intervention foisted on our children. Failing which, it would seem a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, “Above all do no harm.” We will address the insanity of vaccine passports in a subsequent op-ed.
Contributing Authors
- Paul E Alexander MSc PhD, McMaster University and GUIDE Research Methods Group, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada elias98_99@yahoo.com
- Howard C. Tenenbaum DDS, Dip. Perio., PhD, FRCD(C) Centre for Advanced Dental Research and Care, Mount Sinai Hospital, and Faculties of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
- Dr. Parvez Dara, MD, MBA, daraparvez@gmail.com
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